Climate Change

Who Is Protesting Banks That Fund Oil Companies?

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When he points us to people like this, we can only celebrate it and pass it on:

Rock On

So many thanks to all who work for change

BILL MCKIBBEN
MAR 25

The white-haired woman in the picture above is one of my great heroes in the world. Her name is Heather Booth, she’s 77, and a board member at Third Act, which helped organize last Tuesday’s massive day of protest against the fossil-fueled banks, coordinating 102 demonstrations in 30 states and (see above) the District of Columbia, where the Rocking Chair Rebellion shut down four banks for the day. Continue reading →

Small But Meaningful Legal Support Of Protest

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Insulate Britain supporters protesting in London this month. Photograph: Daniel Leal/AFP/Getty Images

Strange that this requires a protest, but that’s how it is. Our thanks to Damien Gayle of the Guardian for this coverage:

Top lawyers defy bar to declare they will not prosecute peaceful climate protesters

Six KCs among more than 120 mostly English lawyers to sign pledge not to act for fossil fuel interests

Leading barristers have defied bar rules by signing a declaration saying they will not prosecute peaceful climate protesters or act for companies pursuing fossil fuel projects. Continue reading →

Sailing Cargo Ships, Again

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An illustration shows a wind-powered car and truck carrier ship that a Swedish consortium is developing and aiming to launch late 2024. Photograph: Wallenius Marine/Reuters

Old school (sailing cargo ships) becoming the new trend is as good as news gets these days:

Cargo ships powered by wind could help tackle climate crisis

Shipping produces much of the world’s greenhouse gases but new technology offers solutions to cut fuel use

Cars, trucks and planes get plenty of blame for helping drive the climate crisis, but shipping produces a large portion of the world’s greenhouse gases, as well as nitrogen oxides and sulphur pollution because ships largely use cheap heavy fuel oil. Continue reading →

Golden Oldies

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People perform a die-in on Third Avenue in New York during a protest in 2021.

People perform a die-in on Third Avenue in New York during a protest in 2021. Photograph: Michael M Santiago/Getty Images

Thanks to Oliver Milman, as ever:

‘We have money and power’: older Americans to blockade banks in climate protest

Demonstrations at 90 sites are billed as first major action by older activists: ‘It’s not fair to ask 18-year-olds to solve this’

Climate activists across the US will on Tuesday blockade branches of banks that finance fossil fuels, cutting up their credit cards in protest and holding rallies featuring everything from flash mobs to papier-mache orca whales. Unusually for such a spectacle, the protests won’t be led by young activists but those of a grayer hue. Continue reading →

Seaweed, Seafood, Plastics & Fodder

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Globally, seaweed production has grown by nearly 75 percent in the past decade.

After news of the blob coming our way, here is another useful seaweed story in excellent interactive format:

Seaweed Is Having Its Moment in the Sun

It’s being reimagined as a plastic substitute, even as cattle feed. But can seaweed thrive in a warming world?

For centuries, it’s been treasured in kitchens in Asia and neglected almost everywhere else: Those glistening ribbons of seaweed that bend and bloom in cold ocean waves. Continue reading →

The Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt

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A worker removing sargassum with machinery at a resort in Cancun, Mexico, last year. Alonso Cupul/EPA, via Shutterstock

We have seen its beauty and otherwise tended to feature its positive uses, but not all seaweed is created equal; so, our thanks to Livia Albeck-Ripka and Emily Schmall for this news and analysis:

A Giant Blob of Seaweed is Heading to Florida

The mass, known as the great Atlantic Sargassum belt, is drifting toward the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists say seaweed is likely to come ashore by summer to create a rotting, stinking, scourge.

For much of the year, an enormous brown blob floats, relatively harmlessly, across the Atlantic Ocean. Its tendrils provide shelter and breeding grounds for fish, crabs and sea turtles. Spanning thousands of miles, it is so large that it can be seen from outer space. Continue reading →

Collagen & Its Discontents

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Collagen is derived from cattle, but unlike beef, there is currently no obligation to track the product’s environmental impacts. Photograph: Cícero Pedrosa Neto

Know your beauty products:

Global craze for collagen linked to Brazilian deforestation

Investigation finds cases of the wellness product, hailed for its anti-ageing benefits, being derived from cattle raised on farms damaging tropical forest

Tens of thousands of cattle raised on farms that are damaging tropical forests in Brazil are being used to produce collagen – the active ingredient in health supplements at the centre of a global wellness craze. Continue reading →

Economic Zones On Oceanic Commons

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On this map, exclusive economic zones are shown in white and high seas, or areas beyond national jurisdiction, are shown in light green.

For some historical context it helps to think of the many challenges that commons represent. But here and now, this deal is as important as it gets:

Countries Reach Deal to Protect Marine Life in International Waters

UN member states have forged a landmark deal to guard ocean life, charting a path to create new protected areas in international waters. Continue reading →

Protecting Insects Requires More Effort

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The large marble butterfly is now locally extinct in some places. Rick and Nora Bowers/Alamy

Insects matter, and our thanks to Catrin Einhorn for making it more clear why:

Are Butterflies Wildlife? Depends Where You Live.

A legal quirk leaves officials in at least a dozen states with little or no authority to protect insects. That’s a growing problem for humans.

It’s tough being an insect. They get swatted, stomped and sprayed without a thought. Their mere presence can provoke irrational panic. Even everyday language disparages them: “Stop bugging me,” we say. Continue reading →

SUV Realities, Fictions, Dangers

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Carmakers have long profited from what’s known as the S.U.V. loophole, which allows auto manufacturers to get around fuel-efficiency regulations by selling trucks. Photograph from Alamy

SUV is a three-letter word, popular to the point of problematic. Thanks again to Elizabeth Kolbert for the most recent thinking on the topic:

Why S.U.V.s Are Still a Huge Environmental Problem

The world is moving toward heavier cars at a time when it should be doing precisely the reverse.

Last year, the world’s S.U.V.s collectively released almost a billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. If all the vehicles got together and formed their own country, it would be the world’s sixth-largest emitter, just after Japan. This is a disturbing figure, but, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency, it gets worse. Globally, S.U.V. sales continue to grow, even though, last year, total passenger-vehicle sales fell. And the trend has now spread to electric vehicles: in 2022, for the first time, the sale of electric S.U.V.s edged out the sale of other electric cars. Continue reading →

Living Carbon

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OUR MISSION

We believe the challenge of climate instability is the biggest opportunity for global mobilization we have ever seen. It is an opportunity to learn how to use technology to rebalance our ecosystems rather than further alienate us from them. We work with the inherent power of plants, informed by generations of scientific research, to restore ecosystems, improve biodiversity, and enhance the ability of photosynthetic organisms to draw down and store carbon from the atmosphere.

A mission we are curious about, click the image above to learn more.

Africa’s Sunlight & Europe’s Electricity

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The Noor solar power station near Ouarzazate, Morocco. SEPCO III / XINHUA / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Fred Pearce brings us news from the European-African axis of renewable energy:

In Scramble for Clean Energy, Europe Is Turning to North Africa

In its quest for green energy, Europe is looking to North Africa, where vast solar and wind farms are proliferating and plans call for submarine cables that will carry electricity as far as Britain. But this rush for clean power is raising serious environmental concerns.

Solar panels in sun-rich North Africa generate up to three times more energy than in Europe. And North Africa has a lot more room for them than densely populated Europe. Continue reading →

Renewable Energy & Winged Creatures

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PHOTOGRAPH: YUKIKO YAMAMOTO/GETTY IMAGES

We knew  that the intersection between renewable energy and birds can be problematic, so we thank Emma Foehringer Merchant for this look at one initiative to address it:

Wanted: Dead Birds and Bats, Felled by Renewables

Scientists say collecting, studying, and storing the carcasses from wind and solar facilities can unlock new insights.

“This is one of the least smelly carcasses,” said Todd Katzner, peering over his lab manager’s shoulder as she sliced a bit of flesh from a dead pigeon lying on a steel lab table. The specimens that arrive at this facility in Boise, Idaho, are often long dead, and the bodies smell, he said, like “nothing that you can easily describe, other than yuck.” Continue reading →

Coffee Capsules Reconsidered

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‘It hurts to know that we create so much waste.’ Composite: The Guardian/Getty Images/NASA

We have been clearly on one side of this, but now thanks to Cecilia Nowell and the Guardian we acknowledge a possible reason to reconsider:

Are coffee pods really eco-friendly? The truth behind the surprising findings

Coffee capsules notoriously produce waste – but some experts maintain that reducing how much coffee you use, even with a pod, can decrease emissions

If you drink one of the 2bn cups of coffee consumed each day worldwide, you may have seen headlines last month celebrating the coffee pod, a single-serving container – typically made of plastic or aluminum – that can be inserted into a machine to brew a cup of coffee. Continue reading →

War With The Newts & Anticipation

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The MIT Press ReaderJohn Rieder, an emeritus professor of English at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, shares the following, excerpted from the book Uneven Futures: Strategies for Community Survival From Speculative Fiction:

On Karel Čapek’s Prophetic Science Fiction Novel ‘War With the Newts’

The Czech writer’s darkly humorous novel, published in 1936, anticipated our current reality with eerie accuracy.

Karel Čapek’s “War with the Newts,” published in 1936, one of the greatest pieces of science fiction of the 20th century, is a prophetic work. When I say prophetic, I mean it has the gift of seeing the present for what it is — and not only seeing it but also telling the rest of us what we have been looking at. Continue reading →

Greta Thundberg Talking To David Wallace-Wells

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David Wallace-Wells has published a conversation, Greta Thunberg: ‘The World Is Getting More Grim by the Day’, in advance of the publication of the book to the right:

There is genuinely no precedent in the modern history of geopolitics for the climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Four and a half years ago, she began “striking” outside of Swedish parliament — a single teenager with a single sign. She was 15. In just a few months, she had made her mark at the United Nations climate conference in Poland: “You are not mature enough to tell it like it is,” she told the assembled diplomats and negotiators, “even that burden you leave to us children.” Continue reading →

When Diplomatic Language Is Counter-Productive

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Climate-change straight talk is crucially important as the occurrence of enormous, unnatural disasters coincides with a man-made flood of obfuscation. Photograph from Getty

We look for positive news on the environment without hiding the perils. Bill McKibben, as always, prefers straight talk in all such matters:

The U.N. Secretary-General’s Searing Message for the Fossil-Fuel Industry

Forget diplomatic language—it’s a moment for some home truths.

On Monday morning, at the United Nations, the Secretary-General delivered his annual report on priorities—a kind of State of the Planet address. If you’re struggling to remember the name of the current Secretary-General, it’s António Guterres, who came to the job after, among other things, serving as the Prime Minister of Portugal. We’re used to the idea that “diplomatic language” is filled with euphemisms—“a full and frank exchange of views,” and so on. Continue reading →

Post-Peak Meat

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Hundreds of dairy farms across California have sold the rights to their manure to energy producers. Illustration: Ricardo Cavolo/The Guardian

We are always on the lookout for more reasons why reducing beef and dairy consumption makes sense:

Brown gold: the great American manure rush begins

The energy industry is turning waste from dairy farms into renewable natural gas – but will it actually reduce emissions?

Cows in a meadow at a dairy farm in Zundert, the Netherlands.

Have we reached ‘peak meat’? Why one country is trying to limit its number of livestock

On an early August afternoon at Pinnacle Dairy, a farm located near the middle of California’s long Central Valley, 1,300 Jersey cows idle in the shade of open-air barns. Above them whir fans the size of satellites, circulating a breeze as the temperature pushes 100F (38C). Underfoot, a wet layer of feces emits a thick stench that hangs in the air. Just a tad unpleasant, the smell represents a potential goldmine. Continue reading →

Reducing Cement’s Carbon Footprint, Improving Its Longevity

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PHOTOGRAPH: GETTY IMAGES

Whether we want buildings to last longer or not, we now know that reducing the carbon footprint of the materials used is a consideration is important:

The Secret to Making Concrete That Lasts 1,000 Years

Scientists have uncovered the Roman recipe for self-repairing cement—which could massively reduce the carbon footprint of the material today.

ROME’S PANTHEON STANDS defiant 2,000 years after it was built, its marble floors sheltered under the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome. For decades, researchers have probed samples from Roman concrete structures—tombs, breakwaters, aqueducts, and wharves—to find out why these ancient buildings endure when modern concrete may crumble after only a few decades. Continue reading →

Snowpack & Colorado River Recovery

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Among the arid lands where water from the Colorado River makes agriculture possible is the Colorado River Indian Tribes reservation, which serves Mohave, Chemehuevi, Hopi, and Navajo peoples. More than 70,000 acres of alfalfa, cotton, potatoes, and other crops are being produced on the reservation. (Image credit: Ted Wood/The Water Desk, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

The Colorado River holds our attention for many reasons, but mostly now due to climate impact. Our thanks to Bob Henson at Yale Climate Connection for this:

Wet winter won’t fix Colorado River woes

“One year of good flows doesn’t mean we have a trend,” noted one expert.

Snowpack has been running well above average this winter across the Colorado River watershed. It’s a rare bright spot after 23 years of grinding megadrought brought the driest conditions in 1,200 years to the basin that supplies 40 million people in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and Mexico. Continue reading →